The Errol Flynn Blog

                         

Producer Robert de Young has just announced the release of “Tasmanian Devil: The Fast & Furious Life of Errol Flynn on DVD! Extra Features and Interview material are on the 59 minute docu including:

ADDITONAL INTERVIEWS – with Christopher Lee, Rory Flynn, Beverly Aadland, Luke Flynn, Vincent Sherman
ERROL FLYNN IN CUBA
ERROL AND THE ZACA
ERROL AND THE GULF SCREEN GUILD THEATRE – 2 Radio Plays: 'Alergic To Ladies' and 'Mr and Mrs Smith'
PHOTO GALLERY, POSTER GALLERY(TBC) AND FAMILY
BARON OF MULHOLLAND
FILMOGRAPHY
CREDITS AND LINKS

Check it out here: Umbrella Entertainment

The DVD Tasmanian Devil: The Fast and Furious Life of Errol Flynn will be available 4/18/08 at Gameplanet Store says James McAndrew! Thanks for the Tip, James!

— David DeWitt

    An interview with Jack!

                       Jack Marino, Independant Filmmaker

Jack Marino owner and designer of the Fabulous Flynn website we all know, is an independent filmmaker in Hollywood who announced recently that his indie film FORGOTTEN HEROES is now coming out on DVD.

 

After 20 years of screening his film around to all the major studios and independent distributors its release on DVD marks a personal victory over the studio system that historically, he says, has portrayed the Vietnam veteran in a tragic light.

 

Determined to show his characters as heroes in a foreign conflict and not the stereotypical rapists, druggies and baby killers seen in most of the films dealing with the Vietnam War – Jack’s film is Pro American and is “a good old fashioned action film” in the classic mold without harsh language, and one dimensional characters.

 

In control of his film’s distribution after all these years – Jack Marino is taking his film on the road, and rather enjoying the attention his movie is getting. It is a new world for independent filmmakers like Jack because of the internet.

 

You can view the film’s trailer on Utube at: www.youtube.com…

 

TV talk shows and radio programs are taking notice of his movie’s release and CBS Studios invited Jack to attend a “Celebrity Show for the Stars” on their backlot recently where Gunsmoke was filmed. The show is upcoming  May 17-18. You can meet Jack along with 100 celebrities who will be attending and even get a chance to purchase a copy of FORGOTTEN HEROES from Jack himself with a personalized autograph on the DVD!

 

$5.00 of each DVD sale of FORGOTTEN HEROES will go to the VERTERANS DISABLED FOR LIFE MEMORIAL FUND from his appearances and from any purchase made from his websites:

 

www.forgottenheroesthemovie.com…

 

www.myspace.com…

 

Jack says he will personally autograph any DVD bought from his websites as well if you just post a note when you make your purchase.

 

Jack Marino was a personal friend of legendary movie director Vincent Sherman late in Sherman’s life. Of Jack’s work on FORGOTTEN HEROES Vince Sherman said that he felt Jack would have been given a contract to direct films from Jack Warner. “This was the best compliment I have ever received,” Jack said.

 

Jack Marino is having a hell of a lot of fun and is enjoying every minute of it.

— David DeWitt

 

 

This photograph was taken on the set of “Solomon and <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Sheba” on November 15, 1958 in Madrid, Spain. Power had been filming a fight scene with actor George Sanders when he became weak and collapsed. Nobody realized at the time that he was having a massive heart attack. Power retired to his small, Coachman trailer where he took a nap and died in his sleep less than four hours after this photo was taken. It was a tragic end to one of Hollywood’s greatest stars.

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Unfortunately, Tyrone Power shares with Errol Flynn the distinction of having been smeared after his death. Regarding Power’s alleged homosexuality, I defer to actor Jack Elam who knew Power as well as anyone. When I brought up these allegations in my interview with Elam on June 20, 1998, he became angry and said “Let me tell you something – you tell them they’re full of shit! I mean they’re just full of it! I remember he told Zanuck “Before we finish this picture, put this guy (Elam) under contract.” So I was put under contract at Fox. About three months later he did a picture called “An American Guerilla in the Philippines.” I had a bit part in it, if you remember, nothing important, but I was in the Philippines for a long time on that picture. And I had dinner with Ty many, many nights. And it wasn’t just me. I spent a lot of time with him and talked with him a lot about everything in the world. He loved to converse. He had a very great mind, and he loved to talk. I would have smelled it if there was anything at all. I would have known. There’s no way those people saying that stuff about Ty aren’t full of shit!

— Shamrock

Sakeenah Johnson at Turner Entertainment Networks contacted our blog and asked if we'd like to put a TCM Video Box on the blog for folks to enjoy some clips from their 31 Days of Oscar – unfortunately, we cannot embed the code here BUT we can at the website side of the Errol Flynn Blog at coffeewithdavid.com…. Therefore, Chums go here to see the Video Box and enjoy a few classic clips!

You'll notice Captain Blood right in the middle of the player! Just click it anywhere to activate it – then sellect your clip and enjoy!

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— David DeWitt

Photo by Malum Nalu

— David DeWitt

“Is that you, David Bret?”  The author of CLARK GABLE: TORMENTED STAR, caught recently in a private moment.”

The same author who wrote Errol Flynn: Satan's Angel is at it again trashing another iconic star who can't rise from the grave to defend himself…

The Review:

A well-known definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over, yet all the while expecting a different result. Well, David Bret, British chronicler of such celebrity lives as Valentino, Morrissey, Elvis, Errol Flynn, Joan Crawford, and Edith Piaf, has done it again. As in Camus' famous essay on the myth of Sisyphus, he's pushed the rock all the way to the summit of the mountain, only to have it stop, teeter, and then roll back down to the bottom, crushing him along the way. Once again, despite all his attempts to win some sort of respectability, he has provided the world with yet another model of how not to go about writing a biography. He seems to think that by continually assailing the book stalls with questionable attempts at recreating past lives, he may yet acquire, by sheer attrition, a favourable reputation.

He is sadly deluded. His whole enterprise banks on the fact that when dealing with the dead, there are no laws of criminal libel. The dead have no rights or recourse of redress to their reputations. However, there should, and must be, a law against criminal ineptitude. Libeling the dead aside, Bret's books characteristically exhibit the equally serious offences of terrible writing, frequent misprints, misspellings, misstatements of fact, bad taste, and – worst of all – an almost supernatural lack of acquaintance with correct research methods.

All of which means that if you are a serious-minded person who wants to discover something about a major film star of the past, buy CLARK GABLE: TORMENTED STAR at your own peril. You will learn almost nothing about William Clark Gable, figure of Hollywood history, but everything about David Bret, frustrated celebrity hanger-on and would-be literary mover and shaker.

In this case there will be some moving and shaking, but it will be the moving and shaking of the reader's head in disgust, followed by its removal to the nearest toilet for vomiting.

Despite the claims of his misguided publisher, this is not a biography. Like his other books, it is a diary of his own homoerotic imaginings projected onto a dead celebrity. The dust jacket of the book claims: “Bret draws on a wealth of unpublished material to examine every aspect of Clark Gable's career and personal life, telling story as it has never been told before . . . .”

Okay, at least the second part is true. Nobody has yet – for good reason – had the audacity to claim that Hollywood man's man Clark Gable, at the beginning of his film career, was a male prostitute, and that he had numerous prolonged affairs with men. The first part, however, is patently misleading. CLARK GABLE: TORMENTED STAR is a tired rehash of material from other books and fan magazines, mangled by Mr. Bret's personal proclivities, and peppered with his trademark salacious tidbits of sexual shock-talk. And if the book draws upon any material that's “unpublished,” it's only unpublished because Mr. Bret has just recently thought it up.

Why a publishing house that cared a fig about its reputation would touch anything with David Bret's name on it continues to be one of the unsolved mysteries of our day. With a little digging perhaps the mystery might be solved, but then the question becomes: Who cares? Why bother?

My sympathies go out to John Clark Gable and to any others who might be hurt by this vile, bungling, utterly contemptible piece of trash.

— David DeWitt